« Les Maghrébins seront Maltais ». L’ethnographe à la merci de ses « origines »

• Main Author: Kamel Boukir
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ENS Éditions 2016-04-01
• Series: Tracés
• Subjects: youth; inner city; immigration; narratives; fiction; experience
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/traces/6457

Grounded in fieldwork experience, this article shows how the ethnographer can be reduced to his « origins ». However autobiographical the kind of minority experience described in this article may be, it is nonetheless common among those who are identified as belonging to the « inner-city youth » and to putative « immigrant communities ». In narrative terms, this minority experience takes the form of an impossibility to break free from a straightforward story of immigrants and inner-city life. The ethnographer must engage with these narratives about himself, which continually shape his identity as « immigrant inner-city youth ». This encumbered self, loaded with an imaginary biographical trajectory, rests on the fiction of a legendary origin. While he was born a French citizen in metropolitan France, the ethnographer is systematically expected to relate to the history of his parents born in the former French colonies. Positioning itself poles apart from the struggle for recognition, the article describes three institutional contexts in which the minority experience is a denial of the right to civil inattention.